In the following essay, Charles explores the conflict between love and death in O Pioneers!

Like any other significant novel, Willa Cather's O Pioneers! has elicited a variety of critical responses. E. K. Brown rejoices in its “happy looseness” of structure and “easy strength” of style characteristic of Willa Cather at her best.1 David Daiches, though he finds the novel “episodic and unevenly patterned,” grants it “moments of force and beauty and a general air of power and assurance.”2 To John Randall in his “search for values,” the work suggests the conclusion that “love of the land is always safe, whereas love of human beings is not.”3 An early reviewer, examining the book for The Nation, perceptively states that “the sureness of feeling and touch, the power without...